Question re: Practical Issues in Database Management

I've been reading some of the books recommended to me recently by c.d.t readers, and have a question regarding the Pascal's "Practical Issues in DB Management."

My question is: "Have I misunderstood the Pascal definition, or is it incomplete/incorrect."

In 5.2.2.2 'Multivalued Dependencies' there are two definitions

Multivalued Dependencies: 'An MVD between two columns exists when sets of values in one column are each associated with values in another column'

4th Normal Form: 'If no multivalued dependencies exist between columns, a table is in 4th normal form.'

This definition seems too restrictive. In particular, under those definitions, the following tables (AFAICT) would not be in 4th normal form. (Although in his book he offers this as an example of 4th normal form.)

EMP#   Project        |   EMP#    Activity
====   =========      |   ====    ========
1      Services       |    1      DEBUG
1      Education      |    1      SUPPORT
2      Services       |    2      DEBUG
                            2      TEST
                            2      CODE

 From other reading that I've done, the Pascal MVD definition seems a little different to the standard ones. e.g.,

http://www.utexas.edu/its/windows/database/datamodeling/rm/rm8.html

has a definition that involves a third column, as do several other sites.

Many thanks,
Joe Received on Tue Mar 20 2007 - 18:40:19 CDT